If public goods and transfers are relatively more valuable to the poor, the elderly poor stand to lose from public debt reduction achieved through spending cuts. When long-term surpluses produced by debt reduction are recycled into higher provision of public goods and transfers, future...

This paper examines the distributional consequences of public debt reduction achieved through spending cuts. Under the assumption that public goods and transfers are relatively more valuable to the poor, our calculations indicate that the elderly poor stand to lose from such policies. Debt...